This invention relates to a motor vehicle window lifter with a twistable or bendable guide rail and to several methods for attaching a twistable or bendable guide rail to at least one carrier, which are formed according to at least one of the apparatus claims.
From DE 199 42 643 C2, there is known a method for attaching a cable window lifter to a vehicle door as well as the vehicle door of a motor vehicle, which contains a cable window lifter with a twistable or bendable guide rail which shiftably supports a driver to be coupled with a window pane and at its ends includes fastening points which are braced with fastening points of the vehicle door. By bracing the fastening points of the guide rail with the fastening points of the vehicle door, twisting of the initially straight guide rail with a specified degree of twisting and/or bending of the guide rail with a specified bending radius is effected. The fastening points of the vehicle door lie in planes which intersect each other such that they include an obtuse angle with each other, with the sectional lines of the planes extending vertically or parallel to the direction of travel of the motor vehicle, i.e. in direction of the Z-axis or X-axis.
Since the degree of twisting and/or the bending radius of the guide rail required for guiding a window pane solely is achieved by the bracing of the fastening points, the twist and/or bend of the guide rail of a window lifter, which is arranged in a door gutter of the vehicle door, need not be accomplished before mounting the guide rail on the vehicle door or on a carrier mounted on the vehicle door. Thus, the guide rail no longer must be twisted or bent during press forming, but the straight guide rail, which can simply and easily be manufactured for example by extruding or roller burnishing, is only twisted and/or bent by bracing the fastening points of the guide rail with the fastening points of the vehicle door, which provides for an inexpensive manufacture and assembly of a window lifter into a vehicle door.
Beside a use of individual guide rails in a window lifter mounted in a vehicle door, there are also used door systems or door modules which contain an assembly carrier on which functional components, for example a window lifter unit, a loudspeaker, a side airbag, a door lock arrangement or the like are arranged, or a base plate for a window lifter unit, in order to create a pre-mountable, pre-checkable unit which can easily be mounted on a vehicle door. As parts of a window lifter unit, the base plate or the assembly carrier carries at least one guide rail, on which a driver connected with a window pane is guided.
Such door systems or door modules are used in all kinds of designs in different vehicles and vehicle types of a vehicle manufacturer, wherein each variant of a vehicle type necessitates a specific, individual formation of the door system or window lifter, because the vehicle doors of the different variants and vehicle types are formed differently and differ in their constructive design and configuration. In different vehicle doors, for example, window panes with different kinematics, i.e. different radii of curvature, different pull-off angles (which indicate whether a window pane is retracted into a vehicle door almost vertically or obliquely) and different adjustment paths including rotations about individual or several vehicle axes (X-, Y and Z-axis), are used and require a specific adaptation of the guide rails or of the guide rails integrated into a base plate or of the guide portions formed on an assembly carrier. For this purpose, individual guide rails or guide rails integrated into an assembly carrier or a base plate, which are formed as guide portions, for example are bent about the longitudinal vehicle axis (X-axis) and/or twisted about the vertical vehicle axis (Z-axis) when they are mounted in a vehicle door.